They took the old heart out of your chest
all blue and spoiled like a sick grapefruit
the way you removed your first wife from your life,
and put a strong young blonde one in her place.
What happened to the old heart is unrecorded
but the wife comes back sometimes in your dreams,
vengeful and berating1, with a hairdo orange as flame,
like a mother who has forgotten that she loved you
more than anything. How impossible it is to tell
bravery from selfishness down here,
a leap of faith from a doomed2 attempt at flight.
What happened to the old heart is the scary part:
thrown into the trash, and never seen again,
but it persists3. Now it's like a ghost,
with its bloated purple face,
moving through a world of ghosts,
that's all of us;
dreaming we're alive, that we're in love.
all blue and spoiled like a sick grapefruit
the way you removed your first wife from your life,
and put a strong young blonde one in her place.
What happened to the old heart is unrecorded
but the wife comes back sometimes in your dreams,
vengeful and berating1, with a hairdo orange as flame,
like a mother who has forgotten that she loved you
more than anything. How impossible it is to tell
bravery from selfishness down here,
a leap of faith from a doomed2 attempt at flight.
What happened to the old heart is the scary part:
thrown into the trash, and never seen again,
but it persists3. Now it's like a ghost,
with its bloated purple face,
moving through a world of ghosts,
that's all of us;
dreaming we're alive, that we're in love.